


Empty Bottles

by needchocolatenow



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-19
Updated: 2008-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:28:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/needchocolatenow/pseuds/needchocolatenow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mukuro always shows up for a drink and Tsuna is always the one downing the bottles. They didn't love each other. Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Bottles

**Author's Note:**

> AU from Future Arc.

The first time that they had ever shared a drink was in the great dinner hall at the Vongola headquarters, surrounded by the guardians and other inner Vongola family members. It was also the first of many dinners to come that the guardians sat with their boss at the head of the table, a glass of champagne in all their hands as they stood for a toast.

Tsuna had been nervous for dinner; it was his first time so far away from home and the first time he’s met the full of Vongola. Upon arriving in Italy, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the amount of people that were there to greet him, the new boss of Vongola, had astounded him and made his stomach churn unpleasantly.

There he stood, at dinner, dressed in a fancy double breasted suit that Gokudera had chosen out for him (Gokudera hand picked all the guardians’ outfit for that night because it was a very special occasion and no one knew mafia fashion like Gokudera), glass of pale champagne raised up. Tsuna hadn’t made the toast, rather, it was his father. Iemitsu was a seat away from Tsuna’s right, the Ninth sitting directly to the right of Tsuna.

“To a new generation!” Iemitsu roared heartily, proudly.

The echoes of the toast bounced off tall, decorated walls, noise raising in timbre. Tsuna looked down the long table of where he sat at the head of and caught sight of the short, somewhat out of place eye patch wearing girl. What made him look again was a second image, faded and growing stronger by the moment, overlapping with Chrome.

Instead of Chrome’s delicate, flower petal fingers, it was long, bony and spidery digits that held onto the champagne glass, the hand holding onto the glass connected to lanky limbs clothed in ebony. Tsuna met Mukuro’s odd colored eyes and watched as the older man smiled, one that was almost gentle and looked so natural that it nearly made Tsuna drop his glass of champagne. Like a wisp of mist, sudden and cold, the image was gone and the one that was looking up at him was Chrome, with her cursed eye hidden behind the eye patch.

“To a new generation,” Tsuna mumbled, still shy and bitten, but sound carried unnaturally well at the dinner table and everyone cheered when Tsuna took a drink of his champagne.

-

Time found Tsuna sitting in the gardens, out enjoying the afternoon sun in the midst of winter, and he had just inconveniently decided to drop by an apple tree that sat by its lonesome out in the field of grass. Its branches were dead and bare.

He sat there, wondering what it would be like to be simple and ordinary, when the soft crunch of footsteps on dead flora alerted him to another’s presence. Glancing at the person’s shoes, he determined it to be Chrome. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a year and was surprised at himself for knowing how it was her when it could have been some other female member of the Vongola family looking for him.

“Boss,” she called out in her sing-song voice, ringing like an angel’s herald in the Valley of the Dead.

“Good afternoon,” he replied, ever polite as he was taught growing up.

“It is quite a good afternoon.”

Of course, wherever Chrome was, Mukuro was also. The presence of the male half of the mist guardian was intimidating. Mukuro was a man to be feared. Tsuna had no doubt that while Hibari was the strongest of them all, Mukuro was the most dangerous.

“Why are you here?” Tsuna asked, keeping his tone neutral, not looking at his guardian and keeping his eyes on the poppies that grew across the field, swaying in a nearly nonexistent wind.

There was the evidence of a grin, mischievous and playful, in Mukuro’s speech. “To see the Boss.” There was a bit of a rustle and Mukuro took a seat next to him.

Something small was handed over to him and Tsuna took it, questioning and wondering, looking away from the flowers to Mukuro, watching the six-times damned man pour vodka into two small shot glasses. Tsuna stared at the liquid, hearing the other man sigh softly, and took a sip, feeling the burning sensation of the drink as it made its way past his throat and into his stomach. He was quite aware of the guardian’s gaze on him so he looked back.

“What?”

“I could have poisoned that.”

Looking from Mukuro to the drink he held, Tsuna smiled. “You could have.”

Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly as Mukuro was often unpredictable, the odd eyed man laughed. It was a cursed sound that scratched at the wind, drowning out the whispers of the grass and trees, the lonely harmony reminding Tsuna of biting into a sour apple.

-

The third time that Tsuna and Mukuro drank together was on the eve of Tsuna’s twenty first birthday. Tsuna classified it as a drinking disaster.

Tsuna had just walked out of the shower when he realized someone had entered his room and was standing on the large balcony which overlooked the gardens and the lonely apple tree that he tended to over the past several years. It was autumn and the temperature was becoming ever colder.

“Happy birthday,” Mukuro said in a cracked whisper when Tsuna stepped out beside him. Mukuro sounded different, older and fatigued; it wasn’t the tiredness of muscles or anything physical, but the exhaustion of life and all its grievances.

“Thank you,” Tsuna replied. He had been receiving well wishes the whole day and it was tomorrow that the event would be celebrated. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Are you two doing alright? Ken and Chikusa too?”

Mukuro glanced at Tsuna from the side of his eyes, assessing an invisible value that was only known by the mist guardian. “We are all well,” he answered. “And you?”

“Good,” Tsuna spoke and tugged lightly on Mukuro’s sleeve, leading the taller man back into the room and away from the dawning cold. “Gokudera’s been on a rampage lately to get the party perfect tomorrow. Will you come?” He looked into Mukuro’s red and blue eyes, the blood and the ocean depths meeting in such a way that left chills spiraling up and down Tsuna’s spine.

“Perhaps.” Mukuro lifted two small shot glasses and a vodka bottle. “Drink with me.”

“Of course.” Tsuna was too polite to refuse, especially since it’s been a half a year since he’s actually seen his elusive mist guardian. The man's broken out of jail again (to the poor jailers’ despair). Last he’s heard of Chrome or Mukuro was in drug dealing, the once-Kokuyo gang taking over the drug routes that even the Italian police had no idea of. That had raised the ire of many people on the other end of the law and Tsuna himself had been angry, until he realized that the drugs being trafficked were medical supplies that were delivered to those in need.

They sat down, informally; Tsuna at the foot of the bed and Mukuro on the dresser nearby. Mukuro poured the drinks in silence.

“What’s brought you here?” Tsuna asked out of the need to make some sort of conversation because a quiet Mukuro was strange and didn’t sit very well with him. He knew that people didn’t generally talk a mile a minute like Gokudera and neither were they tight lipped like Hibari, but Mukuro was never one to be mute. Mukuro was about grandiose plans of some sort, always scheming and lying, never one to sit back and listen. It unnerved Tsuna and he couldn’t help but babble like an idiot.

Mukuro was still and motionless, eyes dark and brooding as he stared into his emptied shot glass. Tsuna reached over for the bottle of vodka and refilled both their glasses.

“I suppose,” Mukuro finally spoke with a hint of a sigh, “I suppose the answer to your question is because it is your birthday. A subordinate cannot miss something as important as this.”

Liar, Tsuna wanted to say, but held his tongue. Instead, he smiled and refilled their glasses again. They were going to go through the bottle soon. “You’re a day early.”

“Come midnight, I won’t be.”

Chuckling as he took a drained his shot glass dry, Tsuna poured some more to drink for himself. Mukuro watched, a small smile of amusement on his face. “I don’t get drunk easily,” Tsuna said and the smile on Mukuro’s face got even wider.

“I would have pegged you for a lightweight,” Mukuro teased, drinking more of the vodka. They were more than half way through the bottle and Tsuna was somewhat glad for the alcohol; it was helping cheer Mukuro up from whatever put him in the lurch in the first place. “I’ll have to say, my tolerance of alcohol is not much.”

Surprised and somewhat happy at such a confession, Tsuna reached over to pat Mukuro on the arm. “It’s alright. You don't become a mafia boss and stay a lightweight drinker; I’ll stay sober enough for the both of us.”

“No, you won’t,” the older man spoke and from nowhere, he procured another bottle of vodka. “I’ve got more than enough for the both of us. Drink, Boss, and celebrate.”

So they drank and drank until the moon rose to the twelfth pinnacle in the sky, stars smiling in playful winks down from the heavens. Tsuna had just glanced out at the window, feeling more than tipsy and perhaps just a bit drunk, when Mukuro rose from his seat on the dresser and sat next to Tsuna on the bed.

“Your seat looked more comfortable,” Mukuro mumbled, knocking shoulders with the younger man. If Mukuro was drunk, Tsuna couldn’t tell; his vision was bright and things seemed magnified a thousand times over and Mukuro leaning against his shoulder was heavy, strange, and comfortable. Bits of Mukuro’s long, long hair tickled at his neck and the next thing he knew, the slight discomfort was replaced by something wet.

“M-Mukuro?”

The uncomfortable, frightened feeling that Tsuna got whenever he met Mukuro when he was younger returned at full vigor as the taller man pushed him downward, back onto the bed, lips and teeth still attached to his neck.

“Hush,” Mukuro whispered, sounding very lucid though his actions, his fingers at Tsuna’s button up pajamas (Tsuna was never able to outgrow those) were stumbling and shaking.

Taking a hold of those spidery digits, feeling how bony in structure they were, how cold and thin Mukuro looked and actually was, Tsuna asked through the haze of alcohol; “What are you doing?”

There was a pause, Mukuro rising to meet Tsuna eye to eye, their faces just inches apart. “Are you scared? Do you believe that sex should happen between two people that are in love?”

It was a bold statement, detailing what was going through Mukuro’s head and announcing his intentions, much like a challenge, one that Tsuna didn’t particularly want to take. The mist guardian was grinning that infuriating grin of his, the one that lets one end of his lips quirk upward to smile at a secret something that was only privy to him. Tsuna wasn’t beyond gone with the alcohol swimming circles within his blood stream, but Mukuro was sorrowful and arrogant, secretive and manipulative, pitiful and regretful; Tsuna was too terrified to reach out for him, nevertheless, feeling compelled to reach anyway. Perhaps that was the responsibility of the Sky, to uphold everything below him and provide peace and comfort.

“I-I do believe that sex should happen between people that are in love,” Tsuna admitted, blood pounding at his heart and ears, turning his face pink. He had yet to push Mukuro away.

“Well then.” The number in Mukuro’s eye changed, spinning and spinning, the world around them also spinning and melting till the smell of fruits and flowers floated to Tsuna’s nostrils, the room coming to life like a fairy tale fantasy. Unreal vines of lotuses sprung from all corners, winding around the floors and crawling up the walls to make canopies, apples dangling precariously from the vines or held aloft between the twists of flora. Poppies popped from the cracks on the floor, swaying in an imaginary breeze. Fireflies danced with butterflies in the dim light of the room (no longer a room, but a fantastical setting that resembled nothing Tsuna had ever seen), the soft chirps of crickets echoing. “For tonight,” Mukuro whispered, having yet to break eye contact, “I love you.”

“No, you don’t,” Tsuna murmured in return and Mukuro chuckled.

“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “But for tonight, I do.”

-

Tsuna had become a busy man, often traveling back and forth between Japan and Italy, usually disappearing from his mother’s side for months before heading home again. The thought of how much he was like his father in that aspect made his stomach churn, wanting some semblance of balance, of not abandoning his mother as his father had (it really wasn’t abandonment, but it was close enough).

He was at home, with his mother and Lambo, Fuuta, and I-Pin; it was like old times, just almost, since Fuuta was growing taller than him and Lambo and I-Pin were becoming the splitting image of their future selves. They still argued, though, and Lambo constantly teased I-Pin about her nearsightedness and instead of Tsuna, Fuuta was the one to break up their fights. I-Pin had a habit of running to Tsuna after a particularly nasty spat while Lambo would confide in Fuuta as to what happened. It was kind of sweet, Tsuna thought, being so young and innocent even though they were both experienced hitmen.

Tsuna had just left I-Pin’s room (Lambo and Fuuta took over Tsuna’s old room and I-Pin took the guest bedroom) when there was a knock on the door.

He heard his mother trot towards the door, footsteps light as a feather, once proud brown hair with graying strands brushing the air as she walked.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it!” Tsuna rushed to the front door, suddenly afraid of letting his mother open it just in case the person outside was someone from a rival mafia group. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see the tall, lean form of Rokudo Mukuro, leaning against the doorway with an arrogant smirk.

“Hibari sends his regards,” Mukuro said, stepping past Tsuna and into the house. He gave Nana, who was standing at the alcove curiously, a flirtatious wink and was satisfied with the pink flush that appeared on her cheeks.

“I hope no one got hurt,” Tsuna said and then thought about the likelihood of that before amending with; “too badly.”

Mukuro chuckled, but spoke nothing on the topic and it was dropped altogether.

Tsuna led Mukuro to the kitchen, fishing through the cabinet for two small rounded cups and a bottle of sake. Mukuro raised an eyebrow and Tsuna smiled in return; “This was what you came for, right?”

“I hope you remember what happened the last time we drank together,” Mukuro said, taking the cup from the young Vongola boss. “Though I wouldn’t mind if it happened again.”

“We were both silly and drunk and felt like celebrating.” Tsuna shrugged, trying hard to not let the pink rise to his face. “Let’s go to the back yard.”

They both settled in their seats out on the small back porch that doubled as a hallway just outside the living room and Tsuna poured them both drinks, looking out at the blossoming tree in the yard as they sipped at the sake. The sun was setting and it cast multiple hues of red and gold across the sky in arcs of color. They drank for a while in silence and then Mukuro spoke, breaking the amiable quiet.

“They’re strong.” There was no question as to whom he was speaking about and Tsuna lowered his cup of sake. Mukuro continued, looking at Tsuna with his infuriatingly arrogant smirk. “But we’re stronger.”

“Strength isn’t everything,” Tsuna poured more sake for them both and watched as Mukuro drained his cup.

“No, it’s not,” Mukuro concurred, a purr in his voice as he scooted closer, eyes half-lidded. He was invading Tsuna's personal space deliberately, their faces inches away from each other's. “I know how to get rid of them. You just need to give me your body and I can do the rest.”

Tsuna didn’t shrink back as he once would have done. He met Mukuro’s gaze straight on and smiled wryly. “I don’t think so.”

They stared for a bit more and Mukuro sighed and backed away. “I didn’t think so either. You’re so pathetically easy to predict.”

“Yeah. I think we need to drink some more.”

Mukuro snorted and muttered his agreement.

-

The fifth time that they drank together was after Reborn’s funeral, one with an empty coffin and without a body; Tsuna and Dino had both been present along with many other mafia members. It would have been a field day for the police if they caught wind of such a large gathering.

Tsuna had shrank away from the crowds afterwards, dodged Gokudera and Yamamoto’s concern, flew away from Dino’s invitation for a drink, and shut himself up in his room. Ryohei had been dragged away by other people (namely Kyoko and Haru who had both shown up in Italy for the funeral) for nearly destroying the door.

“I know you’re there,” Tsuna spoke the moment he heard someone step into his room. “Whatever it is, go away.”

A familiar chuckle, one that he hasn’t heard in so long, forced Tsuna to look up. Mukuro didn’t need things like doors or keys to get past obstacles; he could simply create entrances and exits because he was the mist, the illusion that was so genuine that he could deceive even reality, as such was the case with Chrome and her organs.

“Don’t you look pathetic, Boss.”

Tsuna clenched his hands into fists, balling them up under the sheets on the bed he laid upon. “Get out.”

Mukuro was never one to take direction nor was he one to submit to commands. He sauntered over to Tsuna’s bedside, forcing the mafia boss to make room for him or else be sat upon and settled two bottles of brandy on the bed. “One for you, one for me.”

Sitting up in bed slowly, Tsuna contemplated on pushing the mist guardian out of the room, but he didn’t particularly feel up to exerting force on such a childish impulse. He popped open the bottle of brandy and took a long drink, watching Mukuro out of the corner of his eyes as he did so. Mukuro watched him in return, red and blue eyes unsympathetic.

Mukuro had already lost so many things, Tsuna thought, heart strings still tugging at the death of Reborn; the few things that Mukuro did care about (Ken, Chikusa, Chrome) he had already disassociated from them and threw them aside, giving the illusion of abandonment and neglect. Tsuna wondered how hard did Mukuro try not to care, how much does it hurt to close off one’s heart.

Reborn was no longer there anymore to frighten Tsuna anymore, wasn’t there to order special training sessions for him and Dino, wasn’t there to offer his wiser and usually insane opinion on any matter that had to do with Tsuna. Reborn was dead.

“What are you doing here?” Tsuna asked moodily, drinking more and wondering if he should let alcohol just take him away. It was unbecoming of a mafia boss and he didn’t particularly feel like ‘drowning his sorrows’ as others would put it. He rarely drank till he was flat out drunk. “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”

“What you see and what is really there are two different things,” Mukuro replied, eyeing Tsuna’s quickly emptying bottle.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“That’s because you already know.”

Tsuna rolled his eyes, something uncharacteristic of him and somewhat childish, and finished off his bottle before grabbing at Mukuro’s unopened one. Mukuro’s hand wrapped around his. “Tut, tut, Tsunayoshi-kun. This is mine.”

“I need it more than you right now,” Tsuna muttered, not paying attention to the name that was uttered instead of ‘Boss,’ and tried to pull his hand out of Mukuro’s grasp. The mist guardian held on tightly, long, spidery digits that reached over his palm to touch his wrist in a cold, ghostly way.

The number in Mukuro’s cursed eye changed, the room spinning and melting in a familiar, stomach lurching way. They were in a forest, on the beach, at the top of a mountain, in the depths of the ocean, soaring beyond the skies; landscape flashed after landscape, each more soothing than the last.

“Let’s pretend we’re in love.”

Tsuna felt the cracked, chapped lips on his own before his sight could catch up with sensation. Mukuro was pushing him down onto a bed of clouds, knocking the two bottles off to fall through a clear blue sky. They kissed, Mukuro tasting like peppermint and blood and the salty sea, and Tsuna couldn’t bring any strength to push the taller man away. He kissed back, lips falling open to invite a curious tongue in. Stealing air whenever they could, Tsuna closed his eyes and let Mukuro’s wandering hands strip him of his shirt and tie.

“I could—” A kiss. “Take—” Moan. “Your body—” Nip. “Right now.”

“Then do it,” Tsuna challenged with a hiss, Mukuro’s teeth at his neck.

There was a pause, heavy, labored breathing interrupting the silence, and Tsuna stared up hazily at his mist guardian. Mukuro brought his hands slowly up to Tsuna’s face, bony fingers cupping his face, the cascade of lengthy, dark hair that went neglected for so long falling all around to cast a veil over them. Mukuro kissed him in a way that was so sweet, Tsuna almost believed in the illusion that they were in love. Almost.

“For today, I won’t,” he whispered and Tsuna shuddered at the intensity of the words. “Instead, I’ll love you.”

“Then,” Tsuna whispered in turn, “I’ll pretend that I love you too.”

-

“Tomorrow, I will die,” Mukuro proclaimed prophetically, sauntering in on a late dinner between the guardians (minus Hibari and Lambo; one was always missing and the other was in Japan) and Tsuna. “Let’s all have a toast.”

“The hell you will,” Gokudera snarled unpleasantly. “You’re like a cockroach. You don’t die.”

Tsuna had immediately sprung from his seat, worry etched onto his face. “What’s going on? Why? Is someone targeting you?”

“I think you should give whoever is targeting you an EXTREME punch to the face!” Ryohei interjected, pumping a fist into the air. “But if it’s someone that you can’t handle, I can help.”

Mukuro shook his head and passed out little shot glasses all around, bringing a bottle of wine about as he did so. Tsuna wanted to pick up his glass and throw it at his mist guardian or otherwise do some sort of bodily harm to get the full story out of him. Times were dangerous with Millefiore prowling about, trying to take down the Vongola. There were already two drive by shootings and many more brawls that already happened, with or without the boxes’ powers. It usually did so much property damage that it was difficult to keep the police off their trails.

“To my death and the bastards that won’t find my body,” Mukuro proclaimed and slammed back the drink.

The next day there were rumors flying everywhere that a man named Glo Xinia had defeated the Vongola’s mist guardian and a body trade was being arranged. Tsuna never went to the trade because he remembered what Mukuro had toasted to the night before he disappeared.

-

The last time they would ever drink together would be at Tsuna’s grave, freshly laid after the departure of the kids back to the time they were supposed to come from. They left thinking that they’ve changed the future, and in a way, they have. They’ve changed their own futures. Child-Tsuna couldn’t save them from what had already happened. The dead couldn’t be brought back to life.

“We only drank together six times; I guess my number cursed you. This would have been our seventh,” Mukuro said as he took a swig from the small shot glass he held, eyes hardening. “This is what happens when you’re too soft.” He stared at the headstone, the solid enforcement to the fact, the reality, that Sawada Tsunayoshi was dead.

No matter how he dreamed, thought and concentrated, the body that leaned against his, the hand (how warm it was!) that gripped at his elbow; it would never be real and Tsuna would never live again.

“I wasn’t soft. My death was just a catalyst for all that was to come.”

Setting down the shot glass, Mukuro turned to the figure that sat next to him on the grass before the headstone. “That Vongola intuition of yours, isn’t it? You are such a fool.”

Mukuro watched as Tsuna said nothing, just smiled, that fool of a smile that Mukuro could never understand because it was so frustratingly peaceful and being a mafia member was not peaceful at all. He sighed and poured himself more vodka, already fast becoming tipsy and he hadn’t gotten through half the bottle yet.

“I shouldn’t hang around the dead so much.”

Tsuna continued smiling, answering in a quiet, serene tone; “You should go back to living.”

“I guess I can’t pretend to love you again since you don’t exist anymore,” Mukuro sighed playfully, somewhat wistful and regretful, but ever the mischievous prankster that was inherent in nature. He stood from the grass and stretched, smoothing out the wrinkles of his clothes and dusting at the dirt stains.

Tsuna stood with him, still as short as ever and never to get any taller. “I love you,” he said, voice of the wind and trees and nature and sky; he was the all encompassing blanket that protected children in their sleep, the heavens that held at bay all the sorrows of the world.

“I love you,” Mukuro echoed, but no one was there to listen to his words. Shrugging on his coat, Mukuro grimaced. It was alright to walk away, he supposed, because it was a lie anyway.

They didn’t love each other. It was a crafted illusion finer than silk and hotter than the core of a fire; it was the reason for so many empty bottles.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on 8.01.08.


End file.
